Nothing in the Bible strikes me as divinely inspired, indicative of supernatural intelligence. In it I see a patchwork quilt that, in a broken voice, tells of the provincial experiences and fables of a people, reflective of their concerns and needs at a given time and place in history.
The believer who hasn’t studied some of the complex history of religion, or a person who has his/her intellect hermetically sealed in a bag of Dogma Doritos, may be unaware that many of the stories in the Bible are simply new and improved versions (spicy Ranch flavor!) of mythological tales and teachings told by other cultures in or adjacent to the lands of the Bible writers.
And if not aware, all believers should be aware of these important facts (among others):
The Old Testament was written in Aramaic and Hebrew, the New in Greek. Why three languages? Was this a god’s decision, or the doings of humans? In Genesis there are two accounts of the major stories. The accounts are not identical. The four gospels of the New Testament tell somewhat different stories, some of those differences small, some glaringly prominent.
And there were more than four gospels, more than four accounts of the life and teachings of a Jesus. The four that appear in the Bible are simply the ones canonized by Rome, around 300 CE. What happened to the gospels of Philip, of Thomas, and, my favorite, the gospel according to Gomer (Golly, Ay-ndy, did this Jesus feller really dah for mah si-yins?)? The rejected books weren’t booted off the stage of the Supernatural Idol by a cantankerous Simon because they were false. They just didn’t hit the right notes; they didn’t adequately speak to the needs of the authorities/people at the time and/or sufficiently agree with other texts.
Every clan, every tribe, every group of people, has its own way of speaking and set of meaningful narratives. Many hands stitched the stories of the Bible together. That is why, if you bother to read all of it, you might conclude that the Bible god need not be called El, Elohim, Yahweh, Jehovah, Lord, God, Jesus or Christ. The Almighty Frankenstein will do.
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Note: I have decided to change the name of my Sunday posts from “Sunday Sacrilege” to “Sunday Un-Sermon.” PZ Myers of the wildly popular Pharyngula blog also does a Sunday Sacrilege. Although I began doing these posts at my previous blog, the Evolving Mind, in the autumn of 2009, and PZ began his in early 2010, to avoid confusion/complications, I’m renaming mine.
Cartoon thanks to atheistcartoons.com
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Tags: atheism, Bible, Sunday Un-Sermon
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